IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00367732.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Modern Corporate Changes: Reinstating the Link between the Nature, Boundaries and Governance of the Firm

Author

Listed:
  • Cécile Cézanne

    (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur)

Abstract

The theory of the firm and corporate governance are two fields of analysis traditionally tackled separately in the economic literature. This paper seeks to rediscover the link between the nature, boundaries and governance of the firm on the basis of changes in corporate industrial firms. We advance the argument that, to understand the human capital-intensive firm, this analytical interconnection should be restored. On the basis of Critical Resource Theory, we present an innovative vision of the nature, boundaries and governance of firms whose productive activity is built around its key partners' human capital. The organisational mode of governance has changed linked to a renewed conception of the firm. What we term the ‘multi-resources' model of governance of the firm depends on an original representation of the structure, organisation and power relationships of modern firms, whose value arises from the accumulation of specific human capital. Consequently, the multi-resources model involves hybrid governance instrument in order to protect the integrity of the human capital-intensive firm.

Suggested Citation

  • Cécile Cézanne, 2008. "Modern Corporate Changes: Reinstating the Link between the Nature, Boundaries and Governance of the Firm," Post-Print hal-00367732, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00367732
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00367732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-00367732/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ittner, Christopher D. & Lambert, Richard A. & Larcker, David F., 2003. "The structure and performance consequences of equity grants to employees of new economy firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-3), pages 89-127, January.
    2. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    3. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 2001. "The Firm as a Dedicated Hierarchy: A Theory of the Origins and Growth of Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 805-851.
    4. Richard N. Langlois, 2003. "The vanishing hand: the changing dynamics of industrial capitalism," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 12(2), pages 351-385, April.
    5. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    6. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
    7. Morroni,Mario, 2006. "Knowledge, Scale and Transactions in the Theory of the Firm," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521862431, September.
    8. Boyan Jovanovic & Jeremy Greenwood, 1999. "The Information-Technology Revolution and the Stock Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 116-122, May.
    9. Gérard Charreaux & Philippe Desbrières, 2001. "Corporate Governance: Stakeholder Value Versus Shareholder Value," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 5(2), pages 107-128, June.
    10. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    11. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    12. Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Corporate Governance," NBER Working Papers 6309, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jean‐Jacques Laffont & David Martimort, 1997. "The Firm as a Multicontract Organization," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 201-234, June.
    14. Robert E. Hall, 2000. "E-Capital: The Link between the Stock Market and the Labor Market in the 1990s," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 73-118.
    15. Gibbons, Robert, 2005. "Four forma(lizable) theories of the firm?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 200-245, October.
    16. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "Power in a Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 387-432.
    17. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "The Governance of the New Enterprise," CRSP working papers 487, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    18. Kreps, David M, 1997. "Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 359-364, May.
    19. Fama, Eugene F & Jensen, Michael C, 1983. "Separation of Ownership and Control," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 301-325, June.
    20. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1995. "Complementarities and fit strategy, structure, and organizational change in manufacturing," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 179-208, April.
    21. Bengt Holmstrom & John Roberts, 1998. "The Boundaries of the Firm Revisited," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 73-94, Fall.
    22. David J. Teece & Gary Pisano & Amy Shuen, 1997. "Dynamic capabilities and strategic management," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(7), pages 509-533, August.
    23. Melissa B. Frye, 2004. "Equity‐Based Compensation for Employees: Firm Performance and Determinants," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 27(1), pages 31-54, March.
    24. Klein, Benjamin & Crawford, Robert G & Alchian, Armen A, 1978. "Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 297-326, October.
    25. Roberts, John & Van den Steen, Eric, 2000. "Shareholder Interests, Human Capital Investment and Corporate Governance," Research Papers 1631, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    26. Stewart C. Myers, 2000. "Outside Equity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1005-1037, June.
    27. Russell W. Coff, 1999. "When Competitive Advantage Doesn't Lead to Performance: The Resource-Based View and Stakeholder Bargaining Power," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(2), pages 119-133, April.
    28. Bart Hobijn & Boyan Jovanovic, 2001. "The Information-Technology Revolution and the Stock Market: Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1203-1220, December.
    29. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 489-520.
    30. Fama, Eugene F, 1980. "Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(2), pages 288-307, April.
    31. Michael J. Leiblein & Douglas J. Miller, 2003. "An empirical examination of transaction‐ and firm‐level influences on the vertical boundaries of the firm," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(9), pages 839-859, September.
    32. Robert E. Hall, 2001. "Struggling to Understand the Stock Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 1-11, May.
    33. Oecd, 2005. "Growth in Services - Fostering Employment, Productivity and Innovation," OECD Digital Economy Papers 94, OECD Publishing.
    34. Anker Lund Vinding, 2006. "Absorptive capacity and innovative performance: A human capital approach," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4-5), pages 507-517.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cécile Cézanne, 2010. "Un modèle renouvelé de gouvernance d'entreprise : une évaluation empirique sur données françaises," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 120(4), pages 669-700.
    2. Cécile Cézanne & Marianne Rubinstein, 2010. "La RSE comme instrument de la gouvernance d'entreprise," Post-Print hal-00628645, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luigi Zingales, 2000. "In Search of New Foundations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1623-1653, August.
    2. Cécile Cézanne & Olivier Sautel, 2007. "Firme intensive en capital humain et coordination : vers une redéfinition du rapport entre intégration et dé-intégration," Post-Print hal-00331454, HAL.
    3. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "The Governance of the New Enterprise," CRSP working papers 487, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    4. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    5. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    6. Cécile Cézanne & Marianne Rubinstein, 2010. "La RSE comme instrument de la gouvernance d'entreprise," Post-Print hal-00628645, HAL.
    7. Gérard Charreaux, 2002. "Variation sur le thème:"À la recherche de nouvelles fondations pour la finance et la gouvernance d'entreprise"," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 5(3), pages 5-68, September.
    8. Dorothee Feils & Manzur Rahman & Florin Şabac, 2018. "Corporate Governance Systems Diversity: A Coasian Perspective on Stakeholder Rights," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 150(2), pages 451-466, June.
    9. Marco Zanobio, 2012. "Aspetti teorici della Corporate Governance," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis1202, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    10. Viral V. Acharya & Stewart C. Myers & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2011. "The Internal Governance of Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(3), pages 689-720, June.
    11. Bernard Baudry & Virgile Chassagnon, 2012. "The vertical network organization as a specific governance structure: what are the challenges for incomplete contracts theories and what are the theoretical implications for the boundaries of the (hub," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 16(2), pages 285-303, May.
    12. Alexander Brink, 2010. "Enlightened Corporate Governance: Specific Investments by Employees as Legitimation for Residual Claims," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 641-651, June.
    13. Cézanne, Cécile & Rubinstein, Marianne, 2012. "La RSE comme instrument de gouvernance d’entreprise : une application à l’industrie française des télécommunications," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 12.
    14. Mahoney, Joseph T., 2012. "Towards a Stakeholder Theory of Strategic Management," Working Papers 12-0100, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    15. Krishna B. Kumar & Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, "undated". "What Determines Firm Size?," CRSP working papers 496, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    16. Nicola Lacetera, 2000. "Corporate Governance and the Governance of Innovation: the Case of Pharmaceutical Industry," KITeS Working Papers 122, KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy, revised Dec 2000.
    17. Raghuram Rajan, 2012. "The Corporation in Finance," NBER Working Papers 17760, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Gibbons, Robert, 2005. "Four forma(lizable) theories of the firm?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 200-245, October.
    19. Cécile CEZANNE & Laurence SAGLIETTO, 2014. "Human Capital-Intensive Firms and Symbolic Value Creation," Timisoara Journal of Economics and Business, West University of Timisoara, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 7(1), pages 70-88.
    20. Cécile Cézanne, 2010. "Un modèle renouvelé de gouvernance d'entreprise : une évaluation empirique sur données françaises," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 120(4), pages 669-700.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Human Capital; Nature and Boundaries of the Firm; Corporate Governance; Critical Resources Theory;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00367732. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.